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“Nobody has open source too much.” -Fireside Chat with Paul Graham.

Source: https://youtu.be/UWh_iAG9cGw?t=15m15s

⬐ stingraycharles

That statement is very difficult to prove. Where’s the control group? To take an example from YC themselves, what would rethinkdb have looked like if they kept a close core and monetized upon that?

It’s a very bold claim, and I’m not sure I agree.

⬐ wolco

They tried that route and gave up on 2016.

⬐ stingraycharles

That isn’t the same. Asking money early on is often a clear validation of monetizable ideas, which isn’t the case with open source projects; even if you gain traction, you never know whether the users will pay for it.

⬐ zzzcpan

But you can ask money either way, whether you open source things or not.

⬐ stingraycharles

That is true, but the statement by pg was that there hasn’t been a single case where a startup open sourced too much. I’m saying that at best it’s uncertain, and more realistically not true.

You can open source too much, especially when you don’t know yet which aspects of your business add the most value (and thus you should charge for). You can ask money when you open source stuff (e.g. support, cloud service, etc), but how do you know when you shouldn’t have just licensed your actual product?

⬐ kolpa

If you can write a prototype software in just a few person years that is enough to launch a major business, yet you can't generate more value by being the expert hosts/consultants on it, you are a rare breed.

Who writes a small piece of software that changes the world yet do anything else to build commercial value on top of it?

⬐ zzzcpan

I understand what you are saying, but open source code cannot be a product, so it doesn't matter whether you open source everything or not. You will also feel over protective about it, not actually open sourcing everything under the most permissive license. No matter how I think about it, I can't imagine how a startup can over open source things.

⬐ stingraycharles

> I understand what you are saying, but open source code cannot be a product, so it doesn't matter whether you open source everything or not.

The point I'm making is: why open source it at all? Couldn't you earn money by keeping the source closed and selling the actual product?

⬐ TimJYoung

That's not true. You can sell a software product and provide the source code as part of the product and/or sell the source code at a premium price to those that need/want it in order to make modifications/customizations or just to have for security/auditing purposes. However, the general stipulation is that you cannot just share that source code with everyone else, only to other customers that have also purchased, or have access to, the source code.

⬐ None

None

⬐ bane

I really liked his idea that the users teach you about what you've made. That's a really great philosophical point.

I think his comments about open source are interesting and how he's never seen anybody open source too much. I humbly disagree, I've definitely seen a few startups get nowhere because they ended up open sourcing their entire product, meaning nobody needed to pay them for anything.

There needs to be a strategy for open sourcing your code...for example if dropbox open sourced their client, they'd still own the relationship to their storage back-end and act as the broker for that data. Their client isn't really worth anything anyways...so it doesn't really matter.

But let's say Microsoft open sourced Office and Windows. Okay, now where do they make their money? They're pretty much just left with services work, and services and support often only exist if the software has problems. Anybody else can then come along and code away their services business by fixing bugs, making better interfaces etc.

Open sourcing needs to have a valid business strategy and it can't just be putting your company's investment up on github because that feels good.

⬐ ignoramous

Re Dropbox: AFAIK, most of the magic happens in the client. The way they seamlessly integrate with different OSes seemingly as an innocuous folder that blends in with rest of the other folders is genius.

See: https://www.quora.com/Many-articles-about-Drew-Houston-say-t... and http://allthingsd.com/20120815/inside-dropboxs-reverse-engin...

⬐ amelius

I'm not sure what to think of this. On one hand this hack into the OS to improve the UX seems genius. On the other hand, what if the next version of the OS is not so easy to hack? Users will be upgrading to a new OS, but suddenly not able to use dropbox.

Also, doesn't hacking into the OS void the warranty?

⬐ tectonic

What startups have you seen opensource too much?

⬐ bane

There was an enterprise cloud company I once worked with. They had built a layer on top of HDFS and some nice admin tools to go along with it.

Their customers hired them to build out systems that would provide in-house clouds and their tooling helped make HDFS deployment, management and integration a bit easier.

They decided to open source all of their software at some point which meant their model went from:

- Provide tools to make deploying HDFS better, this was their secret sauce

- Provide services to setup/manage all of this

to

- Provide services to setup/manage all of this

Since everything else in their stack was open-source also, their secret sauce consisted of just being a group of engineers, which isn't much of a secret sauce, except they thought it was because "our guys know the ecosystem and tooling we developed" and so charged more for those service engagements.

Their customers realized this, hired cheaper groups of engineers (some of who included previous employees) who then worked with the now free and open sourced tools that "somebody" else had now spent VC money building instead of them.

Inside of a year or so they turned from a successful and growing concern into a VC investment black-hole and closed up shop.

The tooling and many-man-years of effort that went into developing it all was what the business was about and they simply opened it all up to the world, who then just downloaded it and replaced them.

⬐ tectonic

Interesting, thanks!

⬐ seiji

developing it all was what the business was about

It is interesting how some software is more amenable to being "business open source" than others.

If your software is touching online, realtime, and mission-critical data, that's a good fit for open source + support / add-ons. You can sell add-ons and ease of use and peace of mind. Some databases have been good open source companies, some have failed, and some are just chugging along not being successes or failures (definitely counts as a VC failure though if you're not a breakthrough success).

If your software is more off-line, or one-time use, or "nice to have" (e.g. a great text editor or a great file upload utility or... sysadmin HDFS deployment helpers) and you currently charge $100/seat for your magic sauce, that seems to be an awful fit for open source. Everybody would use it for free and never consider buying anything from you since it's not "real time mission critical."

Open source is preferred to maintain strong data portability, avoid vendor lock-in, avoid vendor future price increase/licensing shenanigans, and also to get a stronger pool of employees since many may likely have used common popular OSS platforms elsewhere too (less re-training needed in many cases for new hires).

⬐ atomatica

Excellent point. Can you imagine Adobe open-sourcing their software to instead focus only on services?

Neither can I.

⬐ seiji

Office and Windows. Okay, now where do they make their money? They're pretty much just left with services work, and services and support often only exist if the software has problems.

Did you just casually imply Office and Windows don't have problems?

Fun fact: open source support isn't about fixing problems, it's about having someone to contractually blame in case of any problems, not because there are problems. It's more CYA and less TBD.

Also see the MonogDB model — release an open source platform full of bugs and data loss edge cases, target people who don't really know what they're doing so they build prototypes and platforms on top of it, then tell companies they have to pay you if they want any help (and they will need help since the platform is fundamentally flawed in the first place).

Anybody else can then come along

Technically, yes. But has that ever happened? If you open source your 5 million line code base, you still have the expertise, not some outsider.

There's also the reverse problem of open source platforms with no owner (e.g. the ecosystem of ever-growing, zero-authority hadoop vomit).

Open sourcing needs to have a valid business strategy

The valid business strategy is nobody will trust you if you aren't open source these days. The age of vendor-vanish = product-vanish is quickly going away. Companies (as buyers) prefer widely used and open source solutions in favor of closed source voodoo that works "just because we say so" with bad documentation and a tiny userbase.

⬐ bane

> Did you just casually imply Office and Windows don't have problems?

No, I think you misread or I wasn't clear. Microsoft (and other companies) support service contracts exist purely because of inadequacies in the software. Microsoft wins twice because they sell the software and sell/certify the service organizations.

> Technically, yes. But has that ever happened? If you open source your 5 million line code base, you still have the expertise, not some outsider.

Yes. Why do you think your employees will stay with your company forever?

All a competitor has to do is put out a job req "looking for expert in foo, will pay top $$$" and hire away your expert staff. This does happen and it often happens because purchasing organizations prefer to "separate interests" between vendors and service companies hoping that it forces vendors to build better software that require fewer services. This creates a market for service competitors, and if they're willing to make smaller margins, can pay your people, the people you have in your company doing service work more.

For example, how many people who don't work for Red Hat offer Red Hat support services?

> The valid business strategy is nobody will trust you if you aren't open source these days.

I don't really disagree. Which is why you need to have a strategy that lets you check the "is open source" box with a buyer, while still protecting your business advantage.

⬐ seiji

For example, how many people who don't work for Red Hat offer Red Hat support services?

Oh, I've no idea. I'd only go to RedHat for "official" RedHat support?

Another intersecting approach is something like Postgres or MySQL. The ownership of the code is irrelevant at this point and we just have independent consultancies (or integrators) providing expert-level services. But, that's almost a complete inversion of the original premise here of open sourcing your own product while retaining product control + revenue from control of said product. (which sounds like what you're afraid of most general "we open sourced our product" situations devolving into.)

In general, I've seen little interest from random Internet companies in providing support for private open sourced software. Nobody wants to spend months/years understanding your software to compete against your knowledge/expertise (unless you get really successful, but that's a whole other game).

⬐ bane

> Oh, I've no idea. I'd only go to RedHat for "official" RedHat support?

Let's just say, it's pretty big.

Bonus, you don't need to hire an outside firm to administer your Red Hat servers if you just hire somebody with "can administer Red Hat" on a job req.

Here's a short list just to fill out your curiosity (the real one is likely much longer):

http://www.linuxit.com/linux-support-services/

http://www.dcvast.com/software_support_services/redhat_linux...

http://www.netdigix.com/

http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/supportma...

and so on.

Red Hat as a company more or less exists these days on name brand. In fact, their EBITD margin is negative despite their stock price riding high.

⬐ justintocci

>The valid business strategy is nobody will trust you if you aren't open source these days.

i disagree. there are many big saas businesses out there and few open source anything.

⬐ badloginagain

I really like the bits of historical interest that comes out in the interview, naval battles and Archimedes- you get the sense that he just loves learning, even if it's not "useful" knowledge. What I like most is how that just comes out as supplementary asides, reinforcing a point or framing a metaphor.

Definitely the kind of guy you could just talk to for hours.

⬐ seiji

Always a good re-read: The world was out to dupe and enslave you, but he, Paul Graham, was — disinterestedly, dispassionately — going to get you out of here alive, armed only with Lisp, random facts about medieval Florence, and deep knowledge of Business Things.

http://www.evanmiller.org/the-other-money-problem.html

It's scary how many of pg's early startup article titles can be rephrased as "Top 10 secrets VCs don't want you to know!"

Establishing brands/personalities is easier when you are sharing elite wisdom with unwashed masses. It makes the reader feel special and in some ways indebted to you (even if that wasn't the intended effect in the first place).

⬐ nodesocket

Completely agree. The most useful advisors I've had in business and startups, always find the perfect analogy for a situation or problem, and break it down. Paul has this amazing ability.

⬐ a8da6b0c91d

The "upwind" and "archimides lever" references are just things I would expect any reasonably cultured person to get.

⬐ baudehlo

He's a very interesting guy who I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with at the anti spam conferences he set up. As a speaker at the conference we got to visit his home where he graciously hosted many anti spam geeks with his own resources. Our conversations were always interesting and funny - he has that smart almost British wit about him.

He's been incredibly lucky to be a smart person who managed to make his seed money, and then use it very wisely to turn it into what I guess is now many times what he invested.

It is a shame he has become so busy lately that he can't interact as easily with the "common man" any more. I emailed him not long ago and got no reply. I guess that happens when you have hundreds or thousands of emails in your inbox every day (a problem he has listed often as one he'd like to see solved by a startup).

⬐ AlwaysBCoding

I've always thought that Apple's horrific App Store approval process was the single biggest threat to the Apple empire. Glad to hear someone else speak out about this. It's seriously absurd that there's an arbitrarily enforced stopgate that prevents you from deploying code. It's a complete disaster. If someone could make a way to instantly deploy code to mobile phones every developer would switch in a second.

The Apple App Store approval process is like that one random weak spot on the Death Star. The only question is what replaces it?

⬐ CamperBob2

Plenty of people are OK with the strict curation that the App Store's approval process represents. It's the reason why we don't have to run AV apps on our iPhones and iPads, after all.

If there's a Death Star-level weakness to the App Store, IMHO it's the app discovery process. It consistently rewards the loudest marketers rather than the best developers.

⬐ None

None

⬐ jfoster

"It's the reason why we don't have to run AV apps on our iPhones and iPads"

That's just not true. Android and desktop OSX are counter-examples. It is security measures like sandboxing of apps that prevent mobile devices from needing anti-virus software.

On desktop Windows, programs used to have unfettered access to the filesystem, including Windows DLLs that were major parts of the OS. Looking back, it actually seems incredible that it wasn't more of a disaster than it was.

⬐ CamperBob2

There has been enough nastyware on Android platforms to at least somewhat justify Apple's approach. Sandboxes have a way of springing leaks.

I was 100% on the opposite side of this debate when the iOS SDK first became available. (This was what I had to say about their limitations at the time, if it lends me any street cred: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVkqbycvuKw ).

But at this point the restrictions I objected to have mostly been lifted, to the point where they don't interfere with the vast majority of developers who aren't looking to do something slimy. It's very nice to be able to download and install apps without having to wonder what the developer's real agenda is.

⬐ dfischer

That's called the internet isn't it?! Mobile browser apps.

⬐ alayne

I wish Paul would give posting on hn another shot. I'm sure he's busy, but I always thought he had interesting perspectives even if I didn't always agree.

⬐ arjunnarayan

He still does post interesting things (along with many other smart people like patrick collison, sam altman, etc.). They just post on Twitter instead.

⬐ brobdingnagian

He doesn't post on the website he moderated for hours daily for years? That's rather ironic.

⬐ None

None

⬐ alayne

I think it got a bit toxic here for him, though he didn't say that. pg still communicates via twitter like the sibling post mentions and writes essays. Maybe he just found that to be a healthier communication mechanism for him which is fine.

⬐ bane

PG always came across to me as unusually thoughtful and smart and friendly (let's be honest he's a great guy), but never enjoyed the kind of combative debate that goes on in web forums.

⬐ FlaceBook

> PG always came across to me as unusually thoughtful and smart and friendly (let's be honest he's a great guy)

He's also amazing and incredible and handsome and witty and strong and I love him oh so much.

⬐ logicallee

if your point is that your parent commenter is sucking up, it misses the mark. there's no particular reason to say nice things about PG - other than that somebody feels that way.

⬐ marincounty

Or, he doesn't care? Or, he uses a pseudonym? I hope he doesn't care? I want to think he has enough political influence to get to the truth? Or, uses some of his money to right society's wrongs? But, I don't know the man, nor what he really values? I did get interested in Lisp, when I found this site?

⬐ yesimahuman

Love the idea of owning consumer and then being "upwind" from enterprise. From my experience in the dev tools space, that's exactly the pattern we've been seeing.

⬐ None

None

⬐ plg

"it's that"

⬐ beartime

That white noise sound in the background was extremely annoying. Great interview though, its always fun to listen to him talk. The interviewer was kind of awkward but all in good fun

⬐ sparkzilla

For those interested, I have collected many of PG's interviews (as well as those of Sam Altman and Jessica Livingston): http://newslines.org/paul-graham/

⬐ kelvin0

Also known as the Sermon on the 'Cloud'. Seriously though, good interview, seems like a really great guy.

⬐ None

None

⬐ wamatt

Nice one. Oh and here's a random thought, you might want to try including the transcripts. This may help with increasing Google organic traffic.

⬐ sparkzilla

Thanks. Can the transcripts be added automatically from Google?